discusses the question of the criminality of drunkenness.

"Let the fact be noticed that such is the lethargy which alcoholism
produces upon reason and conscience, that it is sometimes necessary to
bring the offender to view his drunken indulgence as a crime. We have
known a refined and influential citizen to be so startled at the fact
that he wished to destroy the lives of all persons, even of his own
family, who manifested unhappiness at his intemperance, that seeing
this terrible criminality of his indulgence, instantly formed, and has
forever kept, his resolutions of abstinence. We have known the
hereditary dypsomaniac break from his destroyer, and when tempted in
secret by the monstrous appetite, so grind his teeth and clinch his jaws
in keeping his vows to taste not, that blood dripped from his mouth and
cold sweat bathed his face. That man is a model of temperance and moral
power to-day. And it was the consciousness of personal criminality that
stimulated these successful conflicts with the morbid appetite and the
powers of the alcohol disease that had fastened upon them. Shall we
hesitate to hold ourselves, or to demand that communities shall hold
every drunkard--not yet insane--responsible for every act of inebriety?
Certainly, it is not cruel or unjust to deal thus with drunkenness. It
is not the prison we open, but conscience."

The danger in which those stand who have an

INHERITED PREDISPOSITION TO DRINK,

is very great. Rev. I. Willett, Superintendent of the Inebriate's Home,
Fort Hamilton, Kings County, New York, thus refers to this class, which
is larger than many think: "There are a host of living men and women to
be found who never drank, and who dare not drink, intoxicating liquors
or beverages, because one or both of their parents were inebriates
before they were born into the world; and, besides, a number of these
have brothers or sisters who, having given way to the inherited
appetite, are now passing downward on this descending sliding scale. The
greater portion of them have already passed over the bounds of
self-control, and the varied preliminary symptoms of melancholy, mania,
paralysis, ideas of persecution, etc., etc., are developing. As to the
question of responsibility, each case is either more or less doubtful,
and can only be tested on its separate merits. There is, however,
abundant evidence to prove that this predisposition to inebriety, even
after long indulgence, can, by a skillf